In South East European (SEE) countries, which aspire to become part of the European Union in the coming years, women entrepreneurs are still an untapped source of business and job creation. A substantial gap exists between male and female entrepreneurship. Different business association of women and women's entrepreneurs' initiatives are considered to be an important player in a policy dialogue in each of the targeted countries.
According to the economic trends, the project participating countries need to capitalize on the achievements in the field of women entrepreneurship and by finding ways to make their roles at home compatible with economic and political participation. The purpose of this very extensive and complex project is to help raise the awareness on specifics of the entrepreneurship of women in our region with having enhanced capacities of women's entrepreneurs' networks and associations as a final result.

Brief information on the project

LOCATION(S): South East European region: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo*, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey

TOTAL DURATION OF THE ACTION: the period of2012 - 2015

OBJECTIVES OF THE ACTION: A Goal: Women entrepreneurship in SEE ispromoted through combined public and private sector effortsB Project Objective: Promote best policy practices in women entrepreneurship in line with the Small Business Act (SBA) for Europe and capacity building of national and regional women entrepreneur’s networks & associationsC Project Purpose:

Policy support frameworks for women entrepreneurship initiated/advanced in beneficiary countries based on best practices

Women entrepreneur’s networks/associations in beneficiary countries are able to support women entrepreneurs and better represent their interests

DONOR: The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)

SEECEL’s methodology of work is based on Evidence Based Policy Making (EBPM) and on using the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). This includes three main phases: development of instruments (by different experts and SEECEL team together); testing the developed instrument during the strategic piloting (by pilot institutions); and final revision of the instruments answering two main questions “what works and what doesn’t work” and improving the instrument for the full scale implementation.

* This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of independence

Phase 1 activities

The first phase was focused on developing the 2nd Generation of Indicators for Women Entrepreneurs, developing the Women Entrepreneurs Training Needs Analysis System (WETNAS) and developing the Community of Practice (CoP) to serve as non-formal learning tool and a platform for knowledge exchange. In December 2013, SEECEL successfully finalised the first phase which resulted the following outcomes:

OUTCOME 2: One regionally applicable instrument/questionnaire for determining the needs for training by women entrepreneurs developed, translated into 9 national languages and deployed in 1856 companies in 9 participating countries, 1 final publication published in 1000 copies.

OUTCOME 3: Community of Practice (CoP) functional and recognized as platform for exchange of knowledge and information dissemination among at least 70 different project stakeholders, pilot institutions, regional partners and different WE initiatives. The participation of different stakeholders in the overall process has been increased for almost 20%.

The results of the survey are published and available at SEECEL website, as well as the publication on the 2nd Generation of the Indicators for Women Entrepreneurs and are available at the following links:

These project outcomes are also listed among SEECEL’s strategic documents.

Phase 2 activities

The second phase is focused on development of training modules for the train the trainers’ activity as well as on definition of the criteria for the good practice examples. This phase will be finalised with delivering the training to the most representative national associations of business women or women entrepreneurs.

During the year 2015 the good practice examples (3 businesses run or owned by women per country) will be invited for filming their stories and experiences which will further serve as non-formal learning tool to all other women entrepreneurs as well as to those who are planning to start their own business. These short movies will be presented at the final regional conference which will be attended by more than 150 participants from 9 countries.

In January 2014 the second phase of the project has been launched and is now in the implementation.